# Where is metricbeat saving docs?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/where-is-metricbeat-saving-docs/242810>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-monitoring, metricbeat\
**Created:** [July 27, 2020, 9:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/where-is-metricbeat-saving-docs/242810 "2020-07-27T21:11:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![tterranigma](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/tterranigma/32/48360_2.png) [@tterranigma](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tterranigma)\
**Post date:** [July 27, 2020, 9:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/where-is-metricbeat-saving-docs/242810/1 "2020-07-27T21:11:58Z")

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I have setup metricbeat to connect to beats I have on my productions servers. I can see in Kibana's stack monitoring page useful stats about my beats. I also monitor my elasticsearch nodes.

My question is where does metricbeat save these stats? When there is an error, I can docs containing the errors in indices called `metricbeat-7.8.0.....`. But these indices contain no useful docs.

I can see there are some `.monitoring-*` inidices and I think this is where metricbeat writes.

Can I instruct metricbeat to write everything in `metricbeat-7.8.0....` indices? If I want to build an app that reads the useful stats and further processes them, should I trust the structure of `.monitoring-*` indices as stable?

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [July 27, 2020, 9:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/where-is-metricbeat-saving-docs/242810/2 "2020-07-27T21:35:33Z")

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The Elasticsearch monitoring info is stored in `.monitoring` indices, the other data it collects goes into `metricbeat` ones.

You will want to maintain that, if you change it then all the inbuilt dashboards for monitoring the stack will not work.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2020, 11:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/where-is-metricbeat-saving-docs/242810/3 "2020-08-24T23:35:40Z")

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